The document provides several suggestions for making dictation exercises more enjoyable and useful for learners. Some of the suggestions include having learners choose words to dictate to the teacher, using collocations or parts of stories for dictation, allowing learners to fill in missing words from a story using their own prompts, and reconstructing short texts from a single reading. Gamified approaches like controlling a "living tape recorder" teacher are also proposed. The goal is to turn traditional dictation on its head and give learners more creative control and engagement.

1. DICTATION Could we make it more enjoyable and useful? Who does what? How about turning the tables? Could the learners choose everything and then dictate to the teacher?

4. For the dictation, read out one word from each collocation (learners must not write this word, but instead write a collocation – a word that goes with it)

6. Divide the class into “readers” and “writers”, pair each reader with a writer; writers sit down, readers stand.

7. Stick the text up in a wall far away from the writers so that they cannot possibly read it.

8. Each reader walks to the text, reads and memorises part of it and then goes back to their writer to dictate it.

10. Tell the class that you're going to do a normal dictation - but if you have to sneeze or cough (and they can't hear a word) they should write any good word that fits the space. For example you might dictate, "Last Thursday Maria decided to have some cough for breakfast."

12. The learners should write down answers to these prompts e.g. "Robbie Williams, salty, swim, kitten" etc.

14. Tell the students that you would read it only once.

15. Read the text at a normal pace, then give the students about three minutes to write down everything they remember (words, phrases, etc).

17. Introduce yourself as a 'living tape recorder'. Get two students to stand near the board to control the 'tape recorder' while you read the dictation.

18. Members of the class can call out to ask the 'controllers' to 'press' the buttons. You ignore anything people say but strictly obey any button presses. In this way you will read the dictation, rewinding, replaying, rewinding etc until the students are happy that they all have the dictation. It's a bit chaotic at first but it's great after that!